US Coronavirus Update for Tuesday, April 21, 2020
~ A Tuesday spike

Fatalities first ~

• Total US covid-19 deaths as of Tue, Apr 21: 44,638

• Increase in last 24 hours: 2,303 (+5%)

--> Deaths up sharply compared to Mon (+38%) & Sun (+46%)

--> A typical Tuesday spike

2/ Tuesdays have been showing a spike consistently in deaths, going back three Tuesdays.

Yesterday's jump comes on the heels of two days with the opposite — Sunday and Monday deaths lower than the recent curve.

3/ Here's context for the last three days — the fall and the rise in deaths:

New deaths, prior 24 hours:

Tue, 4/21: 2,303

Mon, 4/20: 1,669

Sun, 4/19: 1,576

Sat, 4/18: 2,268

Fri, 4/17: 3,538*

Thu, 4/16: 2,458

Wed, 4/15: 4,834*

Tue, 4/14: 2,388
–––
* State deaths added

4/ If you look back at the last 8 days of deaths, 2 things are clear:

• You have to set aside Wed & Thu, because those days, old deaths from various states were added

• Yesterday's deaths (Tue, 4/21) are right in line with what we would expect from Tue, Thu, Sat of last week

5/ It is always worth pausing to appreciate:

2,303 deaths in 24 hours is 96 deaths an hour, every hour of Tuesday.

Tremendous pain, grief, dislocation.

One week ago — any day before April 14 — 2,303 covid-19 deaths would have been the highest ever.

6/ We need to be careful not to get numb to the scale of 2,303 deaths in a day.

At any point but the last 7 days, that would have been an arresting number.

In terms of the last week, it is a sign that deaths have reached this terrible plateau, but are not rising — in context.

7/ One side note:

A couple sources (World-0-Meters and the COVID Tracking Project) record yesterday, Tuesday, April 21, as the day of the highest US deaths so far.

That's a quirk of when you mark total deaths each day.

. . .

8/ . . . There are 4 or 5 groups carefully recording deaths in the US and the world. It's a demanding project.

For this thread each day, I stick to one source: The Washington Post's world & US map and charts. That's the source I've used every day, data snapped as of midnight.

9/ The Washington Post uses the Johns Hopkins covid-tracking effort (and presents that data in fresh ways that makes it easy to see and understand).

The sources don't vary that much, surprisingly. A few dozen deaths and cases, sometimes more, at various times during a given day.

10/ What's clear is that yesterday was a Tuesday, and showed a spike relative to the previous couple days; and that although deaths were large, they were not high relative to typical days from last week.